Behind the parties and profits is the real star — Fenway Park

Friday

Apr 20, 2012 at 12:01 AMApr 20, 2012 at 8:59 AM

The beauty of Fenway, it seems, is that it transcends. It may not evolve in all the ways we wish, and it may be past its prime.

JON COUTURE

The last of the Mega Millions jackpot winners came forward on Wednesday, claiming their share of the world's largest lottery prize. After taxes, a couple from a small town outside St. Louis, married 41 years, got a check for $110,517,449.

That amount means almost nothing to me, and I suspect to you as well. It's about as abstract as the idea Fenway Park has existed for 100 years.

Scads of centennial material surround me as I type. The Red Sox yearbook, two "100 YEARS" logos on the cover and roughly two a page inside. Red Sox Magazine is an "Official Commemorative Edition." The media guide cover is a shot from the park's earliest years: the trees outside are saplings, the street is car-free and the sky is eerily empty.

"Fenway: A Fascinating First Century" is on the desk, and I'm growing happily afraid of it. The Sports Illustrated-produced coffee-table book is beautifully engrossing, a mix of period photos, historical write-ups and excerpts from the magazine. Every time I've touched it, I look up and a half-hour's gone by.

It's open to a double-page photo from 1934, firefighters desperately battling the construction blaze that nearly left the bandbox with a lifespan nearer that of the ditched City of Palms Park.

The photo was taken 78 years ago. My grandmother was 18 years old. Adolf Hitler hadn't been in power for a year. It may as well have happened on Mars.

It all makes it hard not to view this party today, this year-long round of applause, as the cash grab it is.

I'm a month shy of my 32nd birthday. The concept of 100 years means as much to me as a Fenway 100 Collector Click Pen would. (It's $15 at the Yawkey Way Store. A bargain next to the $30 collectible coin.)

I know scant few of today's state-of-the-art palaces will be in use a century from now, but this is New England. Harvard Stadium opened in 1903. Matthews Arena, current home of Northeastern hockey and basketball, in 1910. Old is kind of our thing.

And those in charge of this team are increasingly not.

It's a debate for another day, but I'm beginning to wonder if even winning — the great equalizer — can entirely save their skins. They are, among their peers, exemplary. The money they pour back into the product. The amount of leeway they give their team builders. The tremendous stewards they've been for Fenway, so long a crutch for the Yawkey Trust explaining why they couldn't win.

Yet it's one tone-deaf move after another, feeding into a caustic sports culture that lives to tear down. It's not time for a well-planned party — the Sox are 4-8, led increasingly by players and men who've not won a thing in October.

This is not a well-planned party. This is the sort of ham-handed punchline that marred the franchise for 86 years.

We're here, though, so let's at least try to enjoy it. The beauty of Fenway, it seems, is that it transcends. It may not evolve in all the ways we wish, and it may be past its prime.

But even as someone who thinks its day is close, if not already here, there's a beauty in the constancy. I'm glad I don't have to be the one to declare the time of death. Deep down, I bet you are too.

Today is not about a pen, an ovation or a victory against the Yankees. (Though that'd certainly be nice.) It's about what made us care, about who made us care, about why we haven't dumped the whole lot of 'em. It's about the truth buried in that old cliche: remembering the first time you walked up that tunnel and saw all that green.

I'd be lying if I said I did: I think it was 1988, that the opponent was Cleveland and that Jody Reed did something notable with the bat, but other facts don't line up. But I know that whether I'm sitting in the third-to-last row of Section 2 with my family or the first row of the press box, I get the same feeling every time I see that field.

I am happy.

A little back-of-the-napkin math says I have spent two months of my life at Fenway Park. That's running time: a few hundred baseball games, a thousand press conferences, a couple hockey extravaganzas, a handful of days waiting to buy tickets, a soccer match on a truncated field, a skate, a couple hours in college when someone left a gate open ...

I wouldn't trade a second of it for anything. And I bet, whatever your stories are and how much those slats hurt after three hours, you wouldn't either.

Jon Couture covers the Red Sox for The Standard-Times. Contact him at jon.couture@bostonherald.com, or through 'Better Red Than Dead' at Blogs.SouthCoastToday.com/red-sox